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58% of High-Performance Employees Say They Need More Quiet Work Spaces (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a CNBC article: Behold the open industrial office space. At one moment, it feels like such a hip environment, bustling with easy communication and collaboration, innovation and headphones just behind every monitor. At another moment, the open office is the loudest, most annoying, distracting and unproductive environment one can imagine. What if the open industrial office is just part of a larger misguided fantasy? What if this office style is hurting our employees working on the hardest problems -- our high-performance employees (HPEs)? What if the open office is causing retention problems, and affecting the quality of our end products? As I outlined in my HPE article, executives and high-performance employees tend to optimize against completely different trade and life principles -- they generally have very different views of the world. This disconnect shows itself very clearly in the environmental conditions of our creative and technical offices. My latest anonymous survey shows that 58% of HPEs need more private spaces for problem solving, and 54% of HPEs find their office environment "too distracting."
It's weird how it's a surprise that such an obviously terrible idea is discovered to be a terrible idea.
When I'm in the office I can't hear myself think, and anyone I'm on the phone with hears everyone around me. It loses us customers as they believe it wholly unprofessional. My employer has an open layout approach and no white noise along with no noise cancelling headsets, so all my customers and I hear is everyone around me. And some of these assholes take pride in being loud("you're telling me to change who I am!"). Luckily, I work from home or on the road the majority of the time, so I don't have to deal with it, but, ultimately, fuck open layouts. Give me offices, or at least tall cubes.
I'm not selling anything, and loud office spaces make it hard to get work done. I end up trying to work from home as much as possible, even when it is theoretically less efficient.
If they want to pack us in like sardines, fine, but: 1) Make cube walls go up to the ceiling, and give us doors and that both of these are reasonably sound-proof, 2) Make sure there is adequate parking for the number of employees you intend to pack in, 3) Make sure there are adequate restrooms for the number of employees you intend to pack in, and that those restrooms are cleaned frequently (ideally by same-gender janitor, so they don't shut down for 15 minutes every 15 minutes), 4) Make sure HVAC is capable of cooling an office with thousands of employees, thousands of computers, inbound sunlight, etc.
Everyone hates open offices
That's why Microsoft Office is still such a big seller :(
The problem is that Bosses, Managers and Sales Extraverts, so these open (Noisy) environments are comfortable to them, and all the noise and hustle and bustle is comforting to them that people are working and excited on what they are doing.
While the Problem Solvers tend to be introverts will prefer the quiet space, to be alone with their thoughts, try things make mistakes without judgement, and sit down and really focus on the problem at hand. But to those managers seeing the guy just sit there and think looks horribly unproductive.
That said most of the High Performance employees are also professionals so when things get loud or distraction just just deal with it. However most of them would be happier if they are working in a quiet location than a loud active room.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's not just that they make it harder to get work done, they make it harder to collaborate too (SHOCK HORROR, that can't be true, the whole reason people do it is for collaboration, right?)
When you need to collaborate with a colleague, this is the typical process:
In individual or 2-up offices:
In an open office:
Alternative way it might happen in an open office:
Final alternative way this might happen in an open office:
Open offices are just not good places to collaborate at all.
Architect here, this is the correct answer. Open plan offices are far more space efficient than cubes, to say nothing of the enormous costs of actual separate rooms. The thing that people don't seem to realize is that this was almost always the case for peons, look at offices from the early part of the 20th century: They are just open rooms with desks. Cubicles were actually an upgrade.
It's funny how scared Americans are of restrooms and genders. I spent a decade in Taiwan where it isn't uncommon for the female janitors to walk in and clean the men's restroom. You know what happens? Everybody just goes about their business. If I'm taking a shit I keep the door closed, if I'm using a urinal I point my dick at the urinal, shake it off, and put it back in my pants without flashing them, offering them the same level of respect that I do the other male occupants. It's really not a big deal and it's funny how much Americans get their briefs tied up in a knot over it.
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." [Thomas Jefferson]